Sometimes I would like to cry. I close my eyes. Why weren't we designed so that we can close our ears as well? (Perhaps because we would never open them.) Is there some way that I could accelerate my evolution and develop earlids?

Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics - such as: if there are less than five million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning.

I've always loved mysteries, the something there that you didn't know, and with 'Case Histories' I just decide to make that more up-front.

I can't help but think that it's an unfortunate custom to name children after people who come to sticky ends. Even if they are fictional characters, it doesn't bode well for the poor things. There are too many Judes and Tesses and Clarissas and Cordelias around. If we must name our children after literary figures then we should search out happy ones, although it's true they are much harder to find.

Jennifer had never liked the pain of remembering what had happened, but for Theo it was the pain that kept Laura alive in his memory. He was afraid that if it ever began to heal she would disappear.

He was born a politician. No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.

What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?